Success Story: Jeff Chase goes from intern to paid writer

The Bleacher Report Writing Internship opened up more doors for me than I could have ever imagined.

I had no experience in online journalism. I was a business communications major with a passion for sports and always had an interest in creative writing.

I joined Bleacher Report as a contributor in August 2011 and soon after pursued a spot in the Fall 2011 internship. After being accepted, I quickly learned many things about online writing that I never would have been aware of. I was taught how to use all the resources that I could access, as well as how to make my work appeal to the widest audience possible.

I saw great success in my writing as an intern, as my reads went from 20,000 a month to 50,000 a month and even eventually over 200,000 a month. After the internship was over, I was given an opportunity to join the website’s Trends and Traffic team, which covers breaking news along with trends that will generate the maximum traffic to the site.

That was my first paid gig with Bleacher Report, and it showed me that hard work and the right moves can really make your dreams of being a paid sportswriter come true. Three months down the road, I have continued to work with TNT, as well as working with the Swagger team.

From everything I learned and the opportunities I have been given, I have approached nearly 2 million reads in less than seven months. I have been given many opportunities to work in different areas of the site, including joining many coverage teams for major sporting events.

Most recently, I have taken on a role with the internship. My goal is to help other interns find the same path to success that I did. As an aspiring sports writer, your goals can get off to a much faster start by learning it the right way from the internship program.

Jeff has been absolutely awesome to work with, and everyone around these parts definitely appreciates all the extra effort and dedication he shows to not only bettering B/R, but himself as well. Thanks for sharing, Jeff, and keep up the great work.

Ken Kraetzer

Although we understand hits are what generate ad revenue, shouldn’t there be other criteria for evaluating good writing? Was a new topic covered, was insight gained to an issue, was a solution to a problem proposed. Then there is the skill of being able to write quickly on deadline, so important in the 24/7 sports news cycle.

Jeff Chase

To answer your question. The read counts were attributed to the skills learned in the internship program. My move into a paid role was not because of my reads, but because of the skills I learned as a writer. The read counts are just the icing on the cake.

http://twitter.com/Schottey Michael Schottey

Read counts aren’t the goal…they’re the reward.

Neri Stein

We work with all of our interns on covering new topics and making new arguments, and writing on deadline is something we stress heavily as well. There is one day a week where each intern in on-call and available to write on any breaking news topic.

Jon Siddoway

Atta boy, Jeff! Makes me even more excited to start the internship.

Brian Dezelske

It’s good to see you thriving, buddy… It was a blast having him as an intern classmate!